What is it about?
Preparedness is an essential aspect of the humanitarian action, and one of the core function of cluster coordination. Local communities and authorities must be prepared to the eventuality of a crisis to mitigate its negative impact. Humanitarian actors must be prepared to provide an efficient and timely response, based on experience and lesson from previous emergencies. WASH Sector Coordinators participate in inter-sector emergency planning process, often led by OCHA and including the Red Cross Movement. They must coordinate the preparation and implementation of the WASH ERP with the WASH partners. The ERP process is inextricably linked to capacity mapping and development, and many tools and approaches are the same for both process.
Coordination platform efforts during preparedness should also include the consolidation of lesson learned from recent emergencies to improve future WASH response planning on key areas.
Building capacity of local authorities to take on WASH humanitarian coordination is part of the general preparedness process led by clusters. Transition from a cluster to a sector-led coordination must be anticipated well in advance, and can only occur once context is stabilizedNational governments are responsible to ensure a well-coordinated, strategic, adequate, coherent and effective response to humanitarian crisis occurring in their country. In some contexts, when government’s capacity to coordinate the response following humanitarian principles is overwhelmed or limited, Humanitarian Clusters may be activated. But as highlighted by the IASC in 2012, humanitarian clusters are by essence temporary, and are responsible to build the capacity of the national government to progressively take a leading role on response coordination, with a final objective of transition from cluster to sector once adequate capacity has been reached. Four years later, this agenda was pushed forward through the launch of the Grand Bargain initiative: the largest donors and humanitarian agencies made several commitments to better localize the humanitarian coordination and to strengthen the role of local government and civil society actors in implementing and monitoring humanitarian WASH response.
when the context allows it, the strenghtening of government's capacity to coordinate the response is one of the responsibilities of the WASH coordination platform and should be embedded into in its work plan.
What are your objectives?
- Develop a common understanding of risk among all stakeholders
- Establish a system to monitor those risks and ensure early actions are taken when required to mitigate or prevent risks
- Design programs aiming at developing the capacities of the whole WASH sector (partners, communities, local market, local authorities...) to better react to potential threats, including the development of contingency plans
- Ensure that WASH humanitarian actors have proper mechanism and tools to coordinate the WASH response
- Develop relevant information that can be used as the basis for initial WASH response strategic planning
- Use lessons from past emergencies to improve current and future humanitarian WASH emergency response
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